


The Voices Beyond the Veil

by BKB



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Analysis, Belief, Character Analysis, Essays, Other, The Veil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BKB/pseuds/BKB
Summary: A short, write up of what might be the reason that both Harry and Luna, but no-one else, can hear the voices in the Veil during the raid on the Department of Mysteries (OotP).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is very quickly written, and probably not very well written, but it's been bouncing around in my head for a while. I've not got a Tumblr or anything like that so this is my next best place to post it. I don't know what you guys will think, if you'll think anything at all, but if you'd like to leave some feedback, I'd be super grateful! I know it's probably been written before but here's my two cents. My referencing is rubbish and maybe one day I'll flesh it out but for now, here goes!

The reason Harry and Luna can hear the voices behind the veil is because of the belief they hold about the afterlife, and conversely, the reason that the others cannot is because of their lack of belief in the afterlife. To put it another way, Ron, Ginny, Hermione and to a lesser extent Neville, seem to have a laissez faire attitude towards magic and supernatural occurrences, and as I’ll explain this will help explain why they cannot hear the voices from beyond the veil.   
On the face of it, it's not so straightforward in terms of how Luna and Harry, seemingly SO different could believe so fervently that an afterlife (what sort remains to be seen) does indeed exist. Harry is rational, he doesn't believe in Nargles or Crumpled Horned Snorkacks, so it seems odd that both he and Luna, for once, agree on something that the rest of the friendship group seemingly dismiss quite readily.   
But if we take a step back, and look at Harry, and really get into the stuff going on in his life, we get to know the reasons why he does believe in an afterlife. He doesn't necessarily acknowledge it through the books, and maybe it will always be a subconscious belief on his part but looking at his life events it becomes clearer and clearer that, for Harry, there is no question about whether he believes he's going to see his departed loved ones again.   
Taking it right back to the beginning. He loses his parents to a madman at just over a year old. He gets sent to relatives who clearly, if not overtly, neglect and abuse him for the next ten years of his life. Whilst he's abandoned in the cupboard and while he spends nights dreaming of green flashes and parents he's never met, you can pretty safely assume that he's just waiting for a miracle. Just waiting for someone to appear at the door and whisk him away to a new life. And what happens? Maybe it's not a knock on the door of number four Privet Drive but still, a stranger turns up! He whisks Harry away to not only tell him there's a way out of his horrible home life, but to also tell him that MAGIC EXISTS! This is his first miracle, and the start of that tiny hope that maybe, one day, he's going to see his parents again.   
Not long after this, after his Hogwarts career is off to a start he stumbles across the Mirror of Erised. I think it's safe to say that the Dursleys probably never showed Harry a picture of his parents, and this mirror gives him the one thing he most wants, it gives him a family that loves him (to an 11 year old Harry, any other family of his that wasn't the Dursleys would probably be a much happier one). He's seen that magic can know things, can create things that are to him, so achingly far out of reach and yet apparently so close.   
Through the next few years he sees that spirits and souls, integral parts of what is traditionally considered stuff of the afterlife, can survive within other people and objects. He sees that magic can be used to obscure death and predict the future. He comes so close to death, and so many times he's barely escaped with his life. Perhaps the most poignant moment for him is seeing and interacting with his parents in the graveyard. Here that tenuous connection made in the mirror, that which was once so out of reach is realised, he's speaking to those beyond the grave! Perhaps here is where his belief in the afterlife is solidified. It's not a question of if he'll see his parents again, but when.   
So, by this point, it should be expected that Harry hears voices beyond the veil. If belief in the afterlife is what allows people to hear those in the great beyond then it makes perfect sense that Harry can hear them. 

Turning this around, to ask why then, can Hermione, Ron, Ginny and Neville not hear anything, is a natural progression. Looking into their backgrounds however, we can draw some convincing reasons as to why they cannot hear the voices.   
For Ron and Ginny (and to a similar extent Neville) have grown up in the wizarding world, to them most if not all of the events that have befallen Harry could be explained away by their understanding of the world around them. Yes these things are far out of the ordinary even in a magical world, but they are well within the realm of possibility. True, they have never seen the things Harry has but perhaps there lies another compelling reason as to why they do not consider the afterlife an important belief. They've never had to. Their parents are alive and well and they would not see them in the mirror, they would not see them come out of a wand and would certainly not see their conversations with them as anything other than ordinary.   
Hermione is a very logical individual and as a true Gryffindor she is very much driven by emotion, but we see time and again that both of these things exist in harmony within her character. That's not to say they she is at one with her emotional self but she never, unlike other very intelligent and highly logical characters, sacrifices her emotional response for a cold, hard logical approach. People may call her obnoxious and a "know-it-all" but she is also emotionally intelligent. Her empathy and ability to identify with the emotional motivations of those around her are second to none. Her fault perhaps is her inability to rein in those emotions where certain individuals or situations are involved but there was a reason she belongs to the house she does, and not Ravenclaw. Her cornerstone is her logic. It must have taken a lot of emotional and logical upheaval to come around to being a witch, however she remained at heart a studious and knowledge driven character. He thirst for knowledge, to prove everything in a rational and sensible way is reason to believe that she does not rule believe in an afterlife. Finally, much like the Weasley siblings, Hermione has never had reason to forgo logic and reason, everything can be explained with facts (even if those are as yet undiscovered to her), she has felt the aching gap left when a loved one passes. She too, has never had to believe in the afterlife.   
Luna is perhaps the easiest to explain. She's lived in the wizarding world her whole life but as a character she looks at the world with wonder. Looking at things another way for her is how she lives her life, meeting her parents it's perhaps obvious where she gets these traits. She looks at life another way and does not care whether these beliefs align with what others commonly think and it would be easy to explain away her belief in the afterlife as a result of this. Unlike the others in the group she has experienced the close call with death Harry has. She lost her mother very traumatically when she was young and has had, therefore, to come to terms with her belief in the afterlife. It stands to reason that someone like Luna would hear the voices.   
What happens after death is not really something people talk about in the wizarding world, there's little mention of it until the last book and even then Dumbledore is enigmatic as always. The personal beliefs of JKR aside, it would be interesting to explore the widely held beliefs of those in the wizarding world. Far from being an expert, to me the most common reasons for belief in an afterlife, not to mention the specifics of said afterlife, is religion. This is not something that comes up very frequently in the wizarding world as we know it so it's a curious thought as to what wizards and witches actually believe. Harry never comes across it and neither do we.   
To that end we only have what Harry experiences to draw conclusions. From his experiences Harry most certainly believes in an afterlife. The next step to him is obvious, he may not know the details but he doesn't need to. Harry and Luna hear those voices because, to them, there is something beyond the veil. The others do not because, to them, nothing exists beyond the veil. At least not yet.


End file.
